PIA08916: Moon at Work

Prometheus draws material from the F ring along an invisible thread of
gravity. Near lower left is an identical feature the moon created on a
previous pass near the ring.

Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is overexposed in this
image, which was taken as part of a sequence designed to help refine
scientists’ understanding of the orbits of Saturn’s small moons.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 41 degrees
above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on March 14, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.8
million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Prometheus. Image scale is 11
kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.